Here’s the message we need to give China in Hamlet’s hometown

Yes, just when it seems world’s clock is showing Mickey’s little hand on the 12 and his big hand on the 11, a City of Boulder delegation is being dispatched to Copenhagen to straighten things out.

The “15” in “COP15,” by the way, refers to the number of Conferences, not the number of Parties. There are 192 Parties, not counting the City of Boulder. That fact alone goes a long way in explaining why the conference is teetering on the brink of failure. (Boulder isn’t a “Party,” because in order to be a “Party” you generally have to have an army and a navy — or at least a well-regulated militia.)

The purpose of the COP15, which runs Dec. 7–18, is to draft a definitive, legally binding successor to the Kyoto Treaty, which spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (they went up instead) and which expires in 2012 in any case.

Or at least that was the purpose of COP15 up until last week. Over the weekend a bunch of Pacific Rim Heads of State got together in Singapore, slapped their heads, and put out a statement saying, in several languages and so many words:

“A definitive, legally binding treaty?

Ye gods! You’ve got to be kidding.

“Politics is the art of the possible — and that ain’t remotely possible.

“What
were we thinking! “So, therefore, be it resolved that at Copenhagen we
will kick this can so far down the road you’ll need the Hubble
Telescope to find it.”

So things are looking pretty grim in Copenhagen.

But, like Mighty Mouse, a City of Boulder Delegation is on its way to save the day.

The
official mission of the Delegation is to “advocate on behalf of local
governments” having an important role to play in combating global
warming.

This may
be easier said than done. A few months ago it was reported that more
than 900 American cities have, like Boulder, taken the Kyoto pledge —
that is to say imposed on themselves the goal of cutting their
greenhouse gas emissions to levels 7 percent below 1990 levels (or 25
percent below 2009 levels in most cases) by 2012. And, all but two of
them (Seattle and San Francisco) are failing to do so.

Still,
inasmuch as the city seems bound and determined to have a Delegation in
the room when the 192 Parties start playing kick the can, the City
Council should do one small thing to make the mission to Hamlet’s
hometown worth the jet fuel:

It should require that every member of the Boulder delegation speak fluent Chinese.

Why Chinese? To enable them to speak truth to power, of course.

When
it comes to combating global warming, the shots at Copenhagen are going
to be called by the Party from Middle Kingdom, not the Parties from the
USA or the EU.

Sending
a delegation that is comfortable speaking Chinese would improve the
odds of the Boulder delegates speaking to the people they need to be
speaking to — the Chinese — as opposed to the people a delegation of
English-only speakers from Boulder is apt to end up talking to:
American and European greens who agree with them to begin with.

And what should the delegation from the People’s Republic be saying to the Party from the People’s Republic of China?

Nothing
complicated, actually. The Chinese are already well aware of the
revolutionary miracles that can ensue when the populations of cities
set out to solve big, intractable problems locally. Take Tiananmen
Square, for example.

What the People’s Republic of Boulder really needs to tell the People’s Republic of China can be said in two sentences:

1. “Comrades, it’s your planet too.”

2. “Comrades, much as
we in the People’s Republic of Boulder might wish it to be otherwise,
the American people aren’t very open to the idea of paying you to do
the right thing.”

There’s no great
mystery as to why COP15, like COPs 1-14 before it, hasn’t produced a
definitive, legally binding treaty on climate change. It is because
most Third World countries, and Second World countries for that matter,
are fundamentally more interested in here-and-now economic development
than in the climatic consequences of that development that may or may
not turn up decades or centuries from now.

And
when it comes to combating global warming, they are going to do nothing
that would slow economic development, no matter how grave the future
consequences for the planet might be.

Circumstance
has made China the leader of the nations that share this view, which
happens to be held by more than three quarters of the Parties at COP15.

Nothing
is going to change on the international level until the 150-plus
Parties for whom China speaks decide that “it’s their planet too.”